Ex-media course leader publishes ‘love letter’ to popular Lake District fell
A former University of Huddersfield lecturer will climb a Lake District mountain at the end of this month to launch her latest book.
Eileen Jones will be joined by friends and colleagues to celebrate the publication of Loughrigg: Tales of a small mountain at the summit of the fell near Ambleside on 28 June.
Having worked for the Yorkshire Post, Eileen set up a degree in Public Relations at the University and went on to be Course Leader for the degree in Journalism.
When Eileen moved to live in the Lake District, she set up her own business, Cumbria PR, working with leading tourism and heritage organisations. She began the first of more than 500 ascents of Loughrigg, but also helped set up two parkruns in the area, at Fell Foot near Windermere, and at Ambleside’s Rothay Park. She has written two books about parkrun, both published by Gritstone, the Hebden Bridge-based publishing co-op .
She says: “For many visitors to the Lake District, the first mountain they climb is Loughrigg, and it becomes a favourite for regular visitors. And for people who live around it, in Ambleside and Rydal and Grasmere and Elterwater, Loughrigg is their playground, their shortcut home, their respite from work, the backdrop to their lives.”
The new title is, she says, a love letter to Loughrigg, a book full of stories about the hill, the people who climb it, the people who live on it, the people who paint it, the children who play on it.
A mountain - but only just
Small in stature, but massive in bulk, Loughrigg (pronounced Luffrigg) is only just a mountain by English standards, only 1101ft (335m) high, and of the 214 peaks listed by Alfred Wainwright in his seven Pictorial Guides to the Lakeland Fells, Loughrigg scrapes in at number 211.
Says Eileen: “For so many it’s their favourite fell. Runners who have won major fell races throughout the Lake District, artists who have travelled the world, and especially the grown-ups who spent their childhood here, they all love Loughrigg. The word ‘playground’ cropped up so many times.
“Within Loughrigg’s spread lies possibly more variety and complexity of landscape and terrain in a small space than anywhere else in the Lake District. The fell has a peculiar and surprising history, and there have been riflemen and golfers up here along with quarry-workers and sheep farmers.”
Eileen will be joined by friends on 28 June for a walk to the top of Loughrigg to celebrate the release of the book. In 2021, 105 runners took seven days to run from the Lakes to the birthplace of parkrun in Bushey Park following the publication of Eileen's How parkrun changed our lives.